How to Keep Your Team’s Morale High

While motivation fires up our interest and willingness to run the race, encouragement helps get us across the finish line.

Credit: Author

A team’s performance isn’t solely based on its members' talent. Multiple other factors—motivation, desire, and confidence—also play a role.

When a team’s morale is down, all their knowledge, experience and skills go to waste.

Without motivation, even simple tasks turn into a drag.

Without desire, the drive to achieve excellence takes a backseat.

Without confidence, feelings of self-doubt, unworthiness and inadequacy creep into how they think, decide and act, which makes them play safe and give up significant opportunities that are even a little bit risky.

High morale in a team turns obstacles into opportunities, gives them courage to stay resilient in the face of challenges and inspires them to learn, grow and succeed. It makes magic possible by turning impossibilities into possibilities.

“While motivation fires up our interest and willingness to run the race, encouragement helps get us across the finish line.”
— Cathy Burnham Martin

Keeping your team’s spirits high takes work, but it will be one of the best investments of your time and energy. Done right, it will be your biggest ROI.

Many things can sap your team’s morale at work. Instead of blaming your team for not achieving the targets or criticizing them for wasting their potential, work on fixing their morale and everything else will fall into place.

Here are the five practices to create a highly enthusiastic and unstoppable team:

Align Career Aspirations with the Right Opportunities

“You can’t inspire and lead people without earning their attention. You achieve that in a counter-intuitive way — by paying close attention to what interests them.”
— Phil Dourado